


Nuts and Bolts

by karrenia_rune



Category: The Piano Man (song) Billy Joel
Genre: Extrapolation, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fic or Treat Meme, Gen, Introspection, POV Female Character, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-26
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-02 18:00:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1059841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at the character of Davey, who is still in the Navy and his relationship with the wife and daughter waiting at home for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nuts and Bolts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merlin Missy (mtgat)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mtgat/gifts).



> It's mostly from the daughter's POV, who I gave a name to. I love the song and the idea of Davey and the Narrator of the song have a kind of  
> found friendship, where they can talk to each other about stuff that they would not otherwise have been able to open up to anyone else. So, Merlin Missy, I hope it serves! (grin>

Waiting was always the hardest part, not knowing how long or how short a time between when or where her father would be deployed. She would put on a brave face, bite her lower lip and with her pinned up in the colorful patterned scarves that she favored, she would stand on the dock with all the wives and families of the sailors present to see their men-folk off. 

They had developed a code of sorts over the years, a short-hand that was a secret only between the two of them; it had grown out of the nights and days when she was a little girl and her father still read to her by the light of the fireplace in the sitting room long after dinner and she'd put into her footed pajamas. 

Her father would read her tales of derring-do, and pirates, and spies and the undersea adventures of Captain Nemo and Ned Henry, and the other and brave sailors both real and fictional who sailed on those high seas spoke to her in a ways that she had never quite been able to put into words. 

She would go to bed and imagine her father with his work-callused hands on the smooth barrel of the canons on the fore-deck of a tall-masted ship, or in the depths of a U-boat, his eyes glued to the screen of a sonar screen, keeping his crew and his vessel safe. Keeping everyone safe, from those who would seek to do them harm.

When she had grown past elementary school gone on to high-school she had been inspired to go outside the conventional roles considered proper for a girl, instead taking on increasingly more and more difficult courses in math and science. Her mother, slow to come around to the idea of a girl in roles traditionally thought to be the province of men, eventually encouraged her to pursue her goals, to forge her own path.

Even she got older and learned to how difficult it was for her Dad to balance his duty to his country to his duty as a husband and a father, their bond continued. The code could be as simple or as complex as they chose, from a simple on-going correspondence. 

There would be snatches of poems that she had read in school, details of her work in the Veterans Hospital, and he would write back about life aboard ship, or the places where his ship , the USS Jousha had harbored at, and even, in rare moments, when the humor and a dry wit that she admired most about her father, his commentary on the fobiles and idosyncahrices of the brass.

And when war broke out in the Middle East or elsewhere and the frequency of the letters would driop off, Shelia Hawkins never despaired, worried, yes, but never gave up hope that the good fortune, fortitude and seemingly indefatigable. There had never been a man who looked out upon the world in all its infinite diversity with quite the open and easy-going attitude as that of Davey Hawkins.

Sheila wished though, that he'd come back home more often, that she could see his face light up, the tattoo on his left arm that he'd said had come from a friend of his who had taken him down to a tavern on the Malta coast for a round of drinks and one thing had led to another, and somehow he'd woken up the following day with a picture of a mermaid and an anchor on his upper arm. 

It was if, whenever she closed her eyes, she could picutre in her mind's eye, as vivid as the warm spring sunlight shining in her face as she bent over the half-finsihed admission forrms in her office. She sat up straighter in her chair, attempting but not succeeding in pushing the meandering thoughts to a back corner of her mind.  
**

Standing on sun-drenched shore of Malta where his ship had been berthed Davey Hawkins shuffled his feet one hand clutching the neck of a bottle of whiskey.

To his left and just behind stood the man who just recently had been playing a mix of jazz and blues in a dusty tavern and who seemed to speak to him in ways he still did not quite understand.

“Man, I feel like a part of me doesn't know how beautifl and precious something is until it's gone. 

“Are you speaking in abstracts or about something in particular?” the other man asked, not really wanting to pry but curious all the same. With an instinct born of long familarties with melodies and songs and a feel for the place of wherever he played, be it a humble tavern on the Mediterran coast or a bar on the Jersey shore, Billy seemed to a feel when it came time to reach out to someone in need, and right now that someone was Davey Hawkins.

In the past week and a half Davey had decided that he not only liked the other man, but he trusted him, too. He was not a man given over much to talking just to hear his own voice, or make himself larger or more important in the sight of other men, but a quiet, unassuming sense of his place, of right and wrong.

“Both, I guess,” replied Davey in a quiet voice.

“It's your family, isn't it? You miss them.”

“Something fierce,” Davey replied. “You know, I've been thinking a lot lately,'' he trailed off, and then snorted, “Don't look at me that way, yes, I've been thinking and I've mentioned my daughter, Shelia and how much she's meant to me over the years. How she always understood how my duty and service in the Navy was as important to me as my obligations as a husband and and a father.

“And now,” Billy softly encourgaged. “And somehow, during our times together and apart, through our correspondence, I think I don't want to be a lifer anymore.”

“Geez, man!” exclaimed Billy, “are you seriously considering giving up your commsion in the Navy?”

For a moment an awkward silence fell unbroken by the hustle- and bustle of the Malta coast, the gulls wheeling high overhead, the distant white noise of the city with its lights and color and Davey shuffled his feet and did not reply at once.

When he did, he turned and held eye contact with his new friend. “We haven't known each other very long have we?”

“No, not really,” replied Billy.

“But somehow, you just have a way of knowing just what to say, just what to do. You know, it's a very rare quality, my daughter would understand

“Shelia?” 

“Yeah, and Billy, I really am I going to do it. I mean, resign and go back home.”

“Davey, it's not my place to tell you what to do or not do, as the case my be,” Billy added somberly, “However, I've always believed that a man's gotta do what he's gotta do, and if this is what you want, then more power to you!”

“It is,” Davey nodded, a smile creasing his mobile face as he tucked the botle of whiskey into the pocket of his white uniform slacks. “Let's go, while there's still daylight. You don''t have to come with me if you don't want to.”

“I'll come,” Billy replied. 

“Thanks, man,” Davey said sincerely, “I mean, for everything.

With a hitch in his throat, and a pause, Billy replied. “Hey, you're welcome.”


End file.
